More than at any time, children witness innumerable, sometimes traumatizing,
media events on TV. That seems that chaotic crime and poor news is unabating.
Foreign wars, natural disasters, terrorism, killers, incidents of child maltreatment,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not forgetting the particular grim
wave of recent school shootings.
All of this kind of intrudes on the particular innocent world of young children. If, as psychologists
say, kids are generally like sponges and even absorb everything that will goes on around them,
how profoundly does indeed watching TV information actually affect them? How careful perform
parents need in order to be in supervising the flow associated with news into typically the home, and precisely how can
they get an approach that actually works?
To answer these kinds of questions, we switched to a -panel of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having faced the particular
complexities of raising their own prone children in some sort of news-saturated
world.
Image this: 6: 30 p. m. Following an exhausting day at any office, Mother is hectic
generating dinner. She park systems her 9-year-old little girl and 5-year-old child in front
in the TV.
“Play Designers until dinner’s all set, ” she instructs the little ones, who,
instead, start flipping channels.
Tom Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, inches announces that a good Atlanta gunman
features killed his wife, daughter and kid, all three having a hammer, before going about
a capturing rampage that leaves nine dead.
In Education News , ” Peter Jennings reports that the jumbo jetliner using
more than three hundred passengers crashed inside a spinning metal fireball at a Hong Kong
airport.
About CNN, there’s a record about the earthquake in Turkey, using 2, 000
people killed.
On the particular Discovery channel, there is a timely specific on hurricanes in addition to the
terror they will create in kids. Hurricane Dennis has already struck, Floyd will be
coming.
Finally, they see an area news report concerning a roller coaster accident at a Fresh
Jersey entertainment park that gets rid of a mother and her eight-year-old girl.
Nintendo was never this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware that will her children may possibly be terrified
by this menacing potpourri of TV media.
What’s wrong with this picture?
“There’s a whole lot wrong with that, but it’s certainly not that easily repairable, ” notes Linda
Ellerbee, the originator and host regarding “Nick News, very well the award-winning information
program geared for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and even gore on TELEVISION is simply not good with regard to kids and it will not do
much in order to enhance the lives of adults possibly, ” says typically the anchor, who works in order to
inform youngsters about world events without terrorizing all of them. “We’re into
stretching kids’ brains plus absolutely nothing we didn’t cover, ” which includes
recent programs in euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer inside schools, book-
banning, the death charges, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee focuses on the necessity of parental oversight, shielding
children by unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing, right now there were horrible images of children being hurt in addition to killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
needed to know should they were safe inside their mattresses. In studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, we found out that kids find typically the news the almost all frightening factor
upon TV.
“Whether it’s the Gulf War, typically the Clinton scandal, the downed jetliner, or perhaps what
happened in Littleton, you have to reassure the children, over and over again,
that they’re going to always be OK–that the reason why this kind of story is reports is that IT
ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. News may be the exception… no person moves on the atmosphere
happily and reports how many airplanes landed safely!
“My job is to position the information straight into an age-appropriate circumstance and lower
worries. Then it’s actually up to typically the parents to monitor what their kids observe
and talk to them”